Due to the threat of coronavirus spreading in federal prisons, both the Department of Justice and the federal courts are taking action to release at-risk prisoners to home confinement. On March 27, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. This new law gave the Attorney General the authority to expand the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) discretion to release prisoners to home confinement to prevent the spread of coronavirus to vulnerable prisoners. On April 3, Attorney General Barr issued a memo allowing the BOP to release vulnerable prisoners at those federal prisons hardest hit by the coronavirus, including FCI Oakdale in Louisiana.
The federal courts have also been using their authority to release at-risk prisoners under the compassionate release provisions of the First Step Act. Recently, SKV, working with our client’s New York lawyers Sullivan & Cromwell, helped to facilitate our client’s release to home confinement from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. According to SKV Partners David Isaak and Karima Maloney, “our client is now out of harm’s way, and we could not be happier.”
